Dear Yoshida, please reconsider your stance on looping field music.

[Munba]

I would love to have looping music in field but they should be very long themes if not they becomes boring after little time..

[Galliano]

TBH, I haven't heard any ambient sounds while running around. It's mostly silent. I've been playing XI in the down time, and in that game you can damn well hear it. Large open areas would have howling winds, and the sea side you could hear the waters hit the shore. Either XIV's ambient noises don't have the same... "power" or the default noise is set way too low.

Adjust your volume settings. If you've got ambient sounds set high you can hear so many things! scurrying animals in the forest, booming thunder claps, howling winds, cawing seagulls, screeching hawks, ocean waves crashing against the shore, the humming sound of aetheryte crystals, the list is endless!

The only thing I wish they would do is separate large crowd sounds from the environment sounds, or at least make them a little less loud. If you have the ambient sound set high and run into a crowded area it's like someone turned the volume up 50%.

[Rennah]

Agreed SO MUCH. Looping background music helps give an area character, but if the same tiny snippet of music just plays over and over, it wears thin and becomes repetitive fast. The short tracks we have are great; why waste them by making it so easy to get tired of them? Expand them and I'd probably sit in areas just for the music, like I used to do in Raincatcher in beta (one of the places that still never seems repetitive, but an incredible waste to be such a short theme).

[Toodles]

/signed.

Soken redesigned the Pharos track to work in no time, it can be done rather quickly.

[Enthy]

I agree with OP, between the long silences and same old battle music and FATE music we've heard since lvl 1, we vary rarely get to hear the OST of each zone.

Also, kind of off topic, but could we have an option in the ambient noise section to turn off crowd noise? I love the sounds of the forest and whatnot, but I do not enjoy the obvious loop of crowd chatter.

[HakuroDK]

You know what I want? Tunepearls. Linkpearls that play music, which is just a lore-friendly method of having an in-game radio.

[Shougun]

I like the ambient noises XD- though I kind of wish they went a little further. When it is just me alone in Coerthas I expect to hear the snow crunch under my feet, there are footstep sounds but they're nothing like wandering out in the snow.

Or the bells and chimes hanging from the Slyphland huts, they need to be chiming away when it is windy >.>. I've actually got a small list and screenshot library of locations I thought sound was missing... lol, wasn't sure to post it since I don't think many care about it and it isn't killing me to lack.

I don't see an issue allowing people the 'option' to loop the songs, but I'm thinking some area's songs are too short and SE might be worried it wouldn't sound good to loop a 30 second track. Juke box/tune pearls might be a good solution :P

[Akira_Tenshi]

I like the ambient sounds to but it's the combination of ambient effects and a beautiful soundtrack that make for a truly engaging experience.

[Souljacker]

I believe that they stopped the looping music because the original soundtrack was so... well it just wasn't as good as XI's was or the level of music we were accustomed to. It became obnoxiously repetitive because all the songs were very short. The original vision of the game was that we would be doing things quickly, and going back to XI.

So players complained about the music and this is the result. What we said was "We want better, longer, more engaging and appropriate music". What YoshiP heard was "We don't like the music looping all the time it's annoying make it stop".

So... Just another instance of really bad communication.

[Nephera]

I'm deaf as hell so i didnt even realize there was a big investment in ambient sounds, I just thought Nobuo didn't want to do full tracks because making a track that loops well without getting repetitive is a nightmare.